Judge: jury won’t hear Jobs’ “thermonuclear” comments against Android

Steve Jobs is not on trial, says US District Judge Lucy Koh.

A jury won't hear about former Apple CEO Steve Jobs' now-famous remarks about his intent to "destroy" Android, a US federal judge has ruled. In a pre-trial hearing, US District Judge Lucy Koh agreed with Apple that the comments were a "distraction."

Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson that he was angry that Google had "stolen" Apple's technology to build the version of Android that was released to the public. "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," he said. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."

Samsung wanted to introduce the comments at trial as evidence of "improper motive." The company's lawyers argued that Apple didn't believe its own claims of copying, but that the lawsuit was merely "a means to an end, namely the destruction of Android."

Judge Koh disagreed. "I really don't think this is a trial about Steve Jobs," Koh said during the hearing.

As noted by Reuters, US federal judge Richard Posner had agreed to admit those same statements as evidence in a separate lawsuit between Motorola and Apple, but that lawsuit was thrown out before it ever went to trial.